 We continue on today with chapter 7, healing and the changelessness of mind. The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration. But the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation. Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner. Healing is the one ability everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication in this world and the only one he accepts. He recognizes no other because he does not accept the ego's confusion of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. This situation, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic always involves the belief that healing is harmful. This belief is its total insane premise and so it proceeds accordingly. Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always sees something special in the healer which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack. The Holy Spirit does not work by chance and healing that is of him always works. Unless the healer always heals by him, the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent since only consistency is conflict-free and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict and is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The fearful healer is a contradiction in terms and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony because it proceeds from integration. It is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is of God can be counted on because everything of God is holy real. Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by his voice and is in accord with his laws. Yet if healing is consistent, it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistency because God means consistency. Since that is his meaning, it is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with his because your whole meaning and your only meaning comes from his and is like his. God cannot be out of accord with himself and you cannot be out of accord with him. You cannot separate your capital self from your creator who created you by sharing his being with you. The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers but he is not grateful to them. That is because he thinks he is giving something to them and is not receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited because he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude which is a lesson in sickness. True learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because by changing his mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change. This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. This places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seems contradictory. You must learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless. When you heal that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing the changelessness mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes his mind. He himself may think he can or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his capital self is. If you see only the changeless in him you have not really changed him. By changing your mind about his for him you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image or an idol that you may worship out of fear but will never love. The other shows you only truth which you will love because you will understand it. Understanding is appreciation because what you understand you can identify with and by making it part of you you have accepted it with love. That is how God himself created you in understanding, in appreciation and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this because it does not understand what it makes does not appreciate it and does not love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something it has increased. I have spoken often of the increase of the kingdom by your creations which can only be created as you were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it? You cannot forget the Father because I am with you and I cannot forget him. To forget me is to forget yourself and him who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and of him who created me. Through this remembrance you can change their minds about themselves as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful, a light, that you can look into theirs and enlighten them as I can enlighten yours. I want to share my mind with you because we are of one mind and that mind is ours. See only this mind everywhere because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this because you perceive only what is true. Come therefore unto me and learn of the truth in you. The mind we share is shared by all our brothers and as we see them truly they will be healed. Let your minds shine with mine upon their minds and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them. This light will shine back upon you and on the whole sonship because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the sonship because it is acceptable to him and therefore to his sons. This is true communion with the Holy Spirit who sees the altar of God in everyone and by bringing it to your appreciation he calls upon you to love God and his creation. You can appreciate the sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation and therefore governs all thought. And from the workbook, Lesson 49, God's voice speaks to me all through the day. It is quite possible to listen to God's voice all through the day without erupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God. Whether you are aware of it or not, it is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world's laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain. The part that is listening to the voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. The other part is a wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind. Try today not to listen to it. Try to identify with the part of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever. Try to hear God's voice call to you lovingly, reminding you that your Creator has not forgotten His Son. We will need at least four five-minute practice periods today and more if possible. We will try to actually hear God's voice, reminding you of Him and of your capital self. We will approach this happiest and holiest of thoughts with confidence, knowing that in doing so we are joining our will with the will of God. He wants you to hear His voice. He gave it to you to be heard. Listen in deep silence. Be very still and open your mind. Go past all the raucous streaks and sick imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. You do not live here. We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God. Do not forget to repeat today's idea very frequently. God's voice speaks to me all through the day. God's voice speaks to me all through the day. God's voice speaks to me all through the day. Do so with your eyes open when necessary, but closed when possible. And be sure to sit quietly and repeat the idea for today whenever you can, closing your eyes on the world and realizing that you are inviting God's voice to speak to you. God's voice speaks to me all through the day. So today is a very deep day of meditation and prayer. And we have two things that we are going into today. First, from the text, we are reminded that this is about changing my mind about my mind. This is healing. This alone is healing. Nothing else is healing. And what does it mean to change your mind about your mind? Accept to accept the changelessness of mind. Mind is constant. Mind never deviates. Mind is eternal. Mind is all. Mind is everything. As our beloved sister, Mary Baker Eddy reminded us, there is no mind in matter. There is no life, truth, substance, or intelligence in matter. Everything is mind. Absolutely everything is mind. So we're not going to confuse the mind with the body. It's our mind that's communicating. It's our mind that extends love. It's our mind that is in communion with the mind of God. It's the mind that creates. The body is a device that can be used by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can speak through it and smile through it and laugh through it and hug through it. But it's just a temporary device to change the mind about the mind. To remember that everything is mind and there is nothing but mind. He goes trying to convince you that the body can both communicate and create. Communicate through words and create, through procreation, through conception, through making other bodies, through linear time, reproducing. None of this is true. If the Holy Spirit is allowed to use the bodies for the purpose of awakening, for the purpose of forgiveness, the body and the world of linear time will disappear because it has no reality. It will not last. There is no mind in matter. The ego tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind and be self-sufficient. Yet there is nothing going on at the level of the body. Behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning. Since we know that it's possible to act in accordance with what you do not believe. That just means the levels of mind are not aligned. You teach what you do believe. If you teach forgiveness, you are teaching that everything is mind. That there is no part that exists in and of itself. There are no persons that exist apart from mind. As the Bible says, God is no respecter of persons. God did not create persons. The ego peopled its world of time and space. The ego peopled the linear world. And so we come to healing today, healing in mind. Healing is the one ability everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication in this world and the only one he accepts. We sink deep, deep into the mind today to hear God's voice speak to us. We call upon God's voice. We want to hear God's voice. When we say, God's voice speaks to me all through the day. We know that it is possible to listen to God's voice all through the day. Regardless of our regular activities, hearing God's voice is not dependent on doing or not doing. We will not allow ourselves to be distracted or disorganized, to feel doubt and uncertainty. We will allow our mind to hear the voice for God and become always at rest and holy certain. To be at peace, we release all faith and trust in the ego. Who would put their trust in a wild illusion that is frantic and distraught when stillness and peace reign forever in the mind of God's beloved child? Who would give the mind over to the past? Past thoughts, raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover our real thoughts and obscure our eternal link with God when instead we could sink deep, deep into the peace that is waiting for us always. That is our very identity, beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. Deep stillness, I abide in deep stillness. I do not live in this world. I abide in deep stillness, in the kingdom of heaven. My identity resides in the kingdom of heaven. And I remember this with today's lesson. God's voice speaks to me all through the day.